


Ashes of the World

by HostisHumaniGeneris



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Infected Characters, Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2018-12-21 14:42:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11946432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HostisHumaniGeneris/pseuds/HostisHumaniGeneris
Summary: Albert Wesker's dream has come true.  Uroboros has consumed the Earth, warping its life beyond recognition.  Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine have survived, to a degree.  They now face the end of everything, and have to come to terms with the changes Wesker has wrought upon the world, and upon themselves.





	1. Chapter 1

She let herself be left behind.

That was the thought constantly running through her head on the helicopter ride. She’d been so drained after that fight, so she let Chris and his new partner pursue Wesker by themselves; she thought she’d slow them. But she’d managed to fight her way through so many Majini alongside Josh, she still had something left in the tank. They could’ve used her help on the freighter.

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

Josh was silent at the controls. He’d lost a lot over the past few days, she knew. She knew the Uroboros test subject she injected killed an entire squad of BSAA agents. More got killed chasing after Ricardo Irving through the wetlands when she helped him escape. The pilot, Doug, ended up dying while drawing fire from the Majini at the base; right after helping her climb to the Helicopter. He seemed so impressed by the fact he was arriving to the aid of the famous Jill Valentine, and then he was dead.

She’d gotten a lot of people killed.

All there was left for her to do was rush to find Chris and Sheva; do whatever she could to help them. Hope things weren’t too late.

She ran her fingers along the holes the P30 injector had left in her skin; the wound was tacky with mostly-clotted blood. Chris and Sheva had been holding back while she’d been trying in earnest to kill the two of them. Her body was trying, at least, dragging the rest of her kicking and screaming. She could’ve killed Chris the first time they’d seen each other again in two years. Just the thinking about it was… she didn’t want to think about it. Rather than kill her, Chris managed to hold her, kicking and screaming, while Sheva tore the device from her chest. They could’ve been killed, and still they managed to save her. 

What else was there to think about? Wesker was getting so close to ending the world. So very close. He’d spread Uroboros over the world. Thanks to her. Without her blood, Uroboros was useless for his insane plans; with her blood, it made sense to proceed-at least in Wesker’s delusional mind. Without Jill Valentine, Wesker would have nothing to threaten the world with. And after her blood was used to create Uroboros, she’d helped him so much afterwards.

He’d have her aid in tests, smirking and praising her help when people burst apart in a flurry of tendrils. They’d never seen success in the lab, just a bunch of thrashing, mindless tendrils. Bad containment practices ended up mutating roaches into bipedal killing machines, true, but people? They all died. Part of her wondered if there was any other result.

Then, he had used her as a troubleshooter. She eliminated officials in Kijuju who tried to interfere when the Plagas were being spread, she dealt with the researchers once they were no longer useful. She helped Irving escape, over and over. She had been so helpful to Wesker. And now that she had a choice, she was lagging behind; it struck her she’d never be able to get to him in time to stop him.

She and Josh were rushing after him, but the only ones capable of stopping Wesker’s plan were Chris and Sheva. And she came close to killing them. Very close. 

Chris saved her. 

He’d save the world.

* * *

He woke up facedown in a puddle of his own blood, metallic taste on his tongue and a ringing in his ears. Everything that wasn’t numb hurt like Hell. He forced himself shakily to a kneeling position as his back protested every inch he rose; he heard a clicking, crunching noise from his joints as he got upright. He took a deep breath, and immediately was hit with a wracking cough as blood from his broken nose found its way down his windpipe. Given the sudden flare of pain when he coughed, he figured his ribs probably were broken. 

Getting to his feet was a struggle. The world was spinning around him, and because of that it took him several minutes to realize it wasn’t just that his balance was shot; the freighter was listing heavily to one side. He managed to stand by gripping a railing and hauling himself up; his back and neck ached all the way. 

“Wesker!” He shouted, the sound coming out garbled to his ears. 

No answer.

Like he actually would’ve had any chance at all if there was one.

Between the darkness and the constant distracting pain, it took him far too long to realize that the bomber that had been housed below the freighter’s deck was gone. Wesker was gone, ready to spread Uroboros across the world. The thing that killed Alpha team, that thing they saw burst from the test subject in the lab, that thing that used to be Excella Gionne… that was going to be the entire world.

He had failed.

He had to fight to keep from sinking to the floor. They’d been so close, damn it. They’d managed to hurt him this time; they figured out he couldn’t dodge what he couldn’t see, killed the lights, and managed to hit the bastard this time. A few gunshots and he’d been bold enough to charge in to inject him with that chemical, make him overdose on what he needed to keep his powers. That had been a mistake; Wesker wasn’t as hurt as he thought, and beat the Hell out of him. But they’d been so fucking close. Him and…

Sheva.

Last thing he could remember before blacking out was staggering, punch-drunk, while Wesker drew back his fist. That was a formality more than anything, the world was already blurring and going dark. He couldn’t recall if Wesker did hit him again or he collapsed before then. The last thing he could remember was Sheva rushing in their direction with her knife. 

He called her name.

No answer.

He stumbled around in the dark, calling her name. Or trying to, it was mostly inarticulate between the coughing, broken nose and missing teeth. The world refused to stay stable under his feet, and he screamed in pain as he lost his footing and hit the deck. Christ, he hurt. That could wait until he found Sheva. He forced himself back up and staggered around again, each step threatening to send him back to the floor. 

Metal groaned.

The ship wasn’t going to last much longer.

He shouted out Sheva’s name again, getting no answer again. 

He continued looking.

He found her in a pool of blood. He dropped to his knees, something inside his chest grinding against something else as he did. Not even thinking, he slid an arm under her neck and tried to rouse her, before he realized. There was nothing to do at this point. Nothing he could do. A ragged hole had been punched straight through Sheva, where her sternum met her collarbone. He could see his wrist through it as he cradled her.

He lost another partner.

It felt wrong, he was the only one there. The agent stepping out of his jurisdiction, who barely knew her. He’d been partnered with the woman for a very short amount of time, the start of the mission. She was a good agent, followed him straight to the end, and… that was all he knew about her, really. They’d saved each other’s lives a dozen times over, she followed him in tracking down Jill, and he barely knew her. Her comrades in the West African branch described her like a kid sister when they met up near the destroyed helicopter. They were all were dead, too. 

Sheva had died alone.

So many people were dead.

And Wesker had gotten away in his bomber. 

Because he let himself get too close and get his ass kicked.

The world was going to end. It wasn’t just him and Sheva, or Decant, Kirk, and everyone else on the mission. Everyone was going to fucking die because he couldn’t get the job done. The Burtons, Keith, Quint, O’Brien, Claire. 

Jill.

Something groaned behind him again. This time, he was pretty sure it wasn’t the tanker.

He stood and half-committed to a turn before deciding against it. He was unarmed, and in no shape to fight anyways. He looked down the hold of the ship, the impromptu runway for Wesker’s bomber. It was pointless; with Wesker airborne nothing he did or could do now mattered, but hardwired survival instincts took hold. If he stayed, something would get him. If he made it to the edge of the runway, he would last a little while longer. 

It didn’t matter how little that time would actually be.

He took a step forward, fighting to keep his balance against the listing of the tanker and the disorientation he felt.

The sounds behind him were louder.

He took a few more steps.

He could feel something land heavily on the deck behind him.

He moved as fast as his body allowed.

It seemed a very long way to the end of the runway. And he felt that whatever was behind him had a much shorter distance to cover. But he kept trudging forward. It was pointless.

But he wasn’t going to stop.

* * *

She’d lost track of how long they’d been flying when they saw it.

Something streaking in their direction through the sky. 

It passed them by.

She and Josh exchanged a glance.

She felt her heart sink.

They heard the detonation, and then a red-black cloud rolled out from the missile. 

It caught up with them like they were standing still, and passed them. The night became even darker. 

For what seemed like an eternity, she and Josh stared at one another. Something he said to her when they first got to the helicopter stuck out in her mind. Doug, the pilot, was a friend of his. Josh said if they didn’t help Chris and Sheva, he would’ve died for nothing. 

Her heart was racing and she felt like she was going to vomit. 

He began to cough. She didn’t.

He kept coughing. She didn’t.

He hunched forward and hacked and coughed and something black twitched out of his mouth for a split-second. Then Josh arched his back, hard, and screamed. He flailed out of his seat, clawing at his face. A tendril slithered where he broke the skin. She was on him, running through everything she could think of to try to figure out some way to help. There was nothing to do. 

Suddenly he wrenched himself up, knocking her down. The helicopter spiraled wildly, knocking the two of them out of the cockpit and into the passenger space. She tasted blood as she hit the steel floor, managing to roll clear of Josh as he continued thrashing. He managed to fight his way to his feet until something snapped and he crumpled against the helicopter door. He screamed again and fell, somehow hooking the door and pulling it open. He was on her now, hands on her shoulders, howling in pain. Their eyes locked; the sclera of his had gone pitch black. He gave a deafening scream as he reared back up; bending backwards at a painful looking angle.

The door was open.

She planted both feet on his chest.

His head snapped downwards and he looked at her with eyes dripping blood and something black, opened his mouth and let out a screech as something writhed in his throat. Tried again. And again. No sound, but he finally managed to mouth out “help”.

She froze for a second.

He threw his head back and wailed, his uniform tearing open as a dozen inky black limbs writhed free of his flesh.

She kicked, and he went out the Helicopter door.

She hoped he hit the ground before the changes finished.

She pushed herself to her feet, stumbling her way back to the cockpit. Wrestling with the stick, she managed to get control of the helicopter; didn’t even look at the altimeter, didn’t pay attention out the windscreen, just tried to get the bird level and steady. She managed to save it. It had been years since she last had lessons; ever since Raccoon, it had struck her as a handy skill to have. Barry had…

No, she couldn’t think of Barry. Because that would lead to her thinking of him and his wife and Polly and Moira, and where they were right now. She just had to focus on something else.

Josh changed. She didn’t.

No, she couldn’t think about that, either. Just had to focus on flying. Right, it had been a long time since her last lessons, and she needed to focus on that. Okay, she was airborne, but that couldn’t last. Where could she go? She wasn’t really familiar with the area around the Tricell labs. She knew the layout of the refinery, the mines, some other places, but she had always been kept on a short leash. She was usually sent to places directly under their control; she was rarely deployed outside.

But still, Wesker and Excella weren’t particularly concerned about keeping secrets from their puppet. The local military could be bribed, but it still made sense for them to keep an eye out; it wouldn’t do if they looked too closely at Tricell’s operations. The BSAA had to have some sort of base of operations nearby, too. It took way too long before she managed to find a landmark under the red-and-black sky; she managed to locate a river, and followed it for a while, watching the fuel gauge drop as time kept passing.

She flew low until she found what looked to be a military depot, then flew until it was out of sight. She set the chopper down as the fuel warning light came on. The depot was far away; it’d be a hike to get there. In the morning. She was drained; felt like everything was made of lead. If the depot was occupied… she’d find out in the morning. She double checked her supplies; one Heckler & Koch handgun with one spare magazine. One mostly-empty Sig Sauer rifle. Two RPG-7s. The helicopter had an emergency kit, she was too tired to look through it. And that was it. 

Bullets didn’t work well against those things anyway. They hated fire. Wesker had her dispose of some test subjects with a flamethrower. They recoiled from it, tried to melt away from it. Burn the things. 

That was the plan. 

After she made sure the helicopter’s doors were shut, she curled up on the bench in the passenger compartment. 

She didn’t nod off immediately. But she was exhausted, and if nothing else, sleep would keep her from thinking. That was something she wanted to stop. She tried to focus on plans for what to do in the morning, trying to focus on how those things hated fire, but her thoughts always drifted.

Josh changed. She did not.

She had stayed behind while Chris and Sheva went to chase after Wesker. 

Wesker used her blood to make Uroboros.

She was alone. There’d never been a success with Uroboros.

And Wesker had launched the missiles. Which meant everything was going to die.  
Wesker had won. 

It was the end of the world.

That last thought played through her head as she drifted off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to thank Silex for putting up with about a year's worth of delay when I said I'd follow that silly NSFW oneshot I did a while back with an actual story that had an actual plot. And for giving me a ton of ideas on how to work this story.


	2. Chapter 2

She still felt tired when sunlight filtered in through the front of the Helicopter. She hadn’t managed to sleep much through the night; her thoughts kept her too occupied despite her best efforts. She woke up thinking of labs, of tests, of hearing Wesker gloat about how _grateful_ he was in her help in making Uroboros useful for his purposes. She groaned and sat up. There was nothing to do but go to the depot, see what she could salvage; she ticked off things she needed. Food and water, definitely. There’d probably be a vehicle or two. Fuel would be nice. 

She didn’t have a lot of supplies. There was a small emergency kit in the helicopter; a few signal flares and some disinfectant, gauze, and tape. Unfortunately, there was no way for her to carry it all; she didn’t have any pockets. She’d have to see if she could find a satchel in the base. She tucked a pair of flares inside the suit and zipped it half up.

Slinging one of the RPGs over her shoulder, she opened the side door of the helicopter and dropped to the ground. 

It was her first clear glimpse of the world that Wesker had brought about; barren white tree trunks reached for a clear blue sky like skeletal hands, tall grass that had fallen limply to the ground, and not much else. The gray, brittle grass crumbled to a fine powder underfoot as she set out, which a hot wind at her back kicked up. The cloud of dust swirled around her as she hiked the way to the base. She kept her head on a swivel, keeping an eye out for any motion. Withered leaves from dead vegetation danced on the wind. Aside from their rustling against each other and her footfalls on the ground, the world was silent. 

Even in the early morning, it was stiflingly hot, and lugging around the RPG, she was sweating profusely by the time the chain-link fence of the base came into view. However, she felt a chill crawling up her back when she saw the black slime dripping from the fence. Definitely occupied, and that was a problem.

She crept around the perimeter of the outpost, slowly and silently. The place was small, just a few corrugated metal shacks and tents; half of which were lying flat on the ground, covered in more black slime. Upturned tables, footlockers, barrels, and assorted junk were covered in black and strewn around the length and breadth of the outpost. A collection of beat-up looking vehicles lay at the opposite end of the place. Along the nearby fence an ancient-looking generator and a few jerry cans of fuel stood.

After making a complete circuit of the place, she decided to venture in. Slowly. The front gate was unlatched, and though she winced as it creaked open, there was no response. The partially-dry black residue coating the ground clung stubbornly to her shoes. She crept towards one of the metal shacks when her shoe came down upon something… not wholly solid, but not just slime. Looking down, she followed the slimetrail she was standing in. Her foot was atop something long and thin, about the breadth of her finger. She looked left and right. Mostly-buried in the residue was a series of long, thin lines, running towards the shack.

The thing she had stepped on slid underneath her foot, toward the shack.

She took a few steps backwards. And shouldered the RPG.

The shack exploded, as what was probably the bases’ contingent of manpower thrashed and writhed, a tangled mass of black, glistening in the sun. The main portion of it was at least thirty feet in the air; tendrils the width of her arm flailing as it leaned down towards her.

She fired, the rocket hitting it low. The base it raised itself upon burst apart; tendrils flying in every direction, while the top of the mass impacted the ground with a splat; black liquid being thrown like a miniture rainstorm by the flailing limbs. One gigantic one slammed down as she dived, leaving a depression in the dirt where she had once been standing. 

What part of the thing that hadn’t been blasted apart was still active. She had to pick herself off the ground and run to avoid another that smashed into the ground. She managed to duck a third, whipping through the are at head level with enough speed to cause an audible crack in the air, only to be dropped to her knees by a fourth, which had been swept along the ground from the opposite direction. She had a moment to recover her bearings before something wrapped against her leg and dragged.

The thing coiled around her, she could feel individual branches pressing against the battlesuit she wore, slipping off while trying to find purchase. Another limb circled around her stomach, squeezing the breath out of her. Smaller offshoots of the limb tried to trap her arms, and she struggled, frantically pulling out one of the flares. As the world spun around her she tore the top off of it and struck it with some difficulty as she tried to keep her arms free. 

The bright red flame was tiny in comparison to the thing, but there weren’t any other options. She plunged it into the limb at her waist; which painfully tightened for a split second before disentangling itself and pulling away. The limb around her leg whipped around before she could hit it, releasing her in midair. 

She pirouetted in the sky above the creature for what seemed like a long time, seeing each undulating fiber dozens of limbs, ranging from tiny to giant, tracked her flight and moved towards her in slow motion. Then, gravity reclaimed her and she hit the ground on her right side. She cried out in pain as the world spun, her vision eventually settling on the generator. Ignoring the blood on her tongue and the pain coursing through her, she got to her feet and stumbled over to it.

When she reached the generator she turned, sucking in a painful breath as every muscle in her body tensed. The thing thrust one of its limbs out, the width of her thigh. Jill half dived-half fell as it hit the generator, reducing it to scrap and rupturing several cans of gas. The limbs pulled back, dragging a bounty of metal, plastic, and fuel towards itself. The trail of gas lead from where the generator used to be to the thing. Leaning against the fence, Jill twisted the top off her second flare. 

The generator went sailing overhead, the creature finding it inedible. 

She struck the top, trying to ignite it. Her right arm was shaking badly. 

It surged closure, black limbs blocking of her escape as it positioned itself over the river of spilled gasoline. 

The flare lit, pink-red flame dancing before her eyes.

It raised its tentacles.

She tossed the flare.

The fuel it was soaked in and laying on lit and it went up like a Roman candle. The thing thrashed wildly in the fires, tendrils pulling it in all directions, keeping it in place for a second until it finally flipped itself over and away from her. It writhed aimlessly, dozens of limbs blindly and futilely searching for sanctuary, while letting out a high-pitched keening. Tentacles receded and a bright orange tumor became visible. 

Jill unholstered her handgun and squeezed off a rapid series of shots; first one went wide and sank into the black mass. Second and third hit the mark, spraying out a small amount of orange liquid. Fourth missed as the creature thrashed. The fifth, sixth, or seventh shot, all of them hits, caused the organ to burst; a sickly-sweet smell hit her nostrils. Shot eight slammed into the organ, already drained of color and shrivelling. She resisted the urge to empty the rest of the magazine.

The thing writhed for a few seconds; flopping off the ground, then just wriggling its tentacles, then growing very still. Black ooze began to drip from the carcass. Some vague, human-shaped forms were in the receding mass, although they were withered and beginning to putrify The dozens of tendrils slowly began to melt into a layer of black gunk.

She dropped to the ground, back still against the fence. She ran a hand down her side from right by the ribs down to her hip; beneath her suit the skin was sore to the touch; she was lucky there didn’t appear to be anything broken. Running her tongue along the inside of her mouth, she found where she had cut her cheek with her teeth and spat a glob of red froth onto the dirt. Her chest wound from the P30 injector was bleeding again. 

Damn, that had been too close.

And it had only been one day since the world went to Hell. Hadn’t even been the full first day, she thought, looking up at the sun, not yet directly overhead. She was tired, sore, hungry, thirsty, and almost been killed by the very first threat she had some across. The world belonged to them, now.

She turned her gaze back to it. The thing was now more or less a spreading black puddle with some vague, semi-solid lumps in the middle of it by the time she managed to force herself back to her feet. 

It used to be people. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. That wasn’t something she could think about right now. What these things used to be were not relevant for her. Survival was. Right now, she had to focus on other priorities.

Food and water.

Guns.

Transportation.

That was what she had to focus on finding.

She wandered the depot; the shacks she took to be barracks were mostly demolished in the thing’s rampage. One of the ones left standing swayed a bit when the wind picked up, two walls bowed out where something had smashed through the corner connecting them. An assortment of personal effects was strewn across the slime.

She searched slowly and methodically. Opened every footlocker that hadn’t been broken apart, dragged scrap metal walls and what used to be tent canvas from one place to another to be sure nothing was hidden underneath, exhausted herself searching for anything of value.

She dropped her plunder on one of the metal slabs. A large knife. A battered Kalashnikov rifle or a knockoff thereof. A few spare magazines. Several key rings. Some cans of… something. A few canteens. 

She unscrewed the cap off one, took a sip, swished, and spat out a mouthful of blood and water. She took a second, larger gulp. It tasted metallic, but it was still drinkable, which was what she needed. She knew she needed to conserve whatever food and water she found; there was no telling where the next safe source of water was, and as for food… the plants all seemed dead, and the animals… she looked at the mostly-melted creature.

She’d have to conserve.

But later. She drained the canteen she was currently holding. Then she used a knife to pry open a can of something; she couldn’t identify it by label, and she couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be by contents, but gulped it down rapidly anyway. 

She’d conserve later. 

She assembled a uniform out of olive-drab clothes that looked like they might fit. They were shabby, lightweight, but fabric; something that would be more suited to this environment than the skintight battlesuit Wesker had her in. Pulling the zipper down as low as it could go, she peeled the suit off of her sweaty skin; pulling her arms out of the sleeves and letting it slide down her shoulders. It clung stubbornly to her and she had to struggle to pull her legs free of it.

Her side was already starting to go purple where she’d landed when the creature had thrown her; and she traced the outline of the bruise with clammy fingertips. Both her forearms were covered in track marks from constant injections and blood draws. She counted three, four, five surgical scars on her abdomen and chest, but she knew she had a few more on her back. Ditching the battlesuit didn’t get rid of every reminder of being Wesker’s puppet. 

But it was a start.

She took another look at the gear she had scavenged. The pants and shirt were slightly too big, but the boots and socks fit well enough. It covered her up. She rolled the sleeves of the uniform shirt up to her elbows, she left it hang open and unbuttoned for the moment; scavenged briefly again until she found a first aid kit and retrieved a bottle of what she took for disinfectant based on its incredibly strong smell, and some gauze.

She poked at the wounds the P30 pump left in her chest, wincing as she did. There was something solid under her skin at one of the wounds; piece of it broke off when it was ripped off, maybe. She briefly considered digging it out, before sense got the better of her. Performing surgery on herself wasn’t a good idea. That souvenir was going to have to stay under the skin.

She just poured disinfectant on the wounds and covered them up, hissing as she did. 

She forced herself to not drink another canteenful of water and continued her search until late in the afternoon. She added onto the collection of magazines and cans, and even managed to recover a few maps. 

They were partly covered in tar and she didn’t know the local language, but she set about trying to decipher them. She managed to puzzle out her position relative to the major population centers. What was the smart play? She should avoid anywhere big, there was nothing there but more of the Uroboros-things. Then again, in all likelihood there were other Uroboros-things to be worried about in the countryside. She wasn’t clear on the local wildlife; Crocodiles, she knew. Termites and roaches, definitely. Lions? Gorillas? With her limited supplies, staying out just meant she had the opportunity to starve to death or die of thirst before running into something. And she still had only the vaguest hint of which way to go to pursue either option.

There was no smart play. The world had gone to Hell, nothing was left but monsters. She squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to think. That wasn’t true, that couldn’t be true. There had to be someone else. Maybe not local, but somebody. She couldn’t be the last person on Earth. She just had to find a way to contact them. She checked the map again. 

Circled, there was a handwritten star and a “BSAA” on the map. BSAA’s West African branch. At least, before P30, before the tests, back when she was still an agent, the African Branch was underfunded, but still BSAA. If nothing else, the fact that the organization sent international operatives, often North American, to serve in other branches, meant it was likely they’d have some English-language maps. And definitely means of communication with other people. But they’d also have biowarfare gear, the knowhow to deal with an attack. If anyone could’ve survived, the BSAA would have.

She folded up the maps, headed for the vehicles. Wiping the gunk off them, she tested the keys she had found. The first car she managed to turn over was a beat up jeep, which coughed, sputtered, and ran. She gathered the supplies she had scavenged and dumped them in the back, the Kalashnikov the passenger’s seat. She drove her way back to the helicopter as the sky darkened, collecting the second RPG and the rest of the emergency supplies, then checked the map again.

The BSAA wouldn’t be too long a drive if she went there directly, but she’d take longer, avoid the population centers. 

 

She drove off.


	3. Chapter 3

He woke up under a bright, clear sky; first noticing the feeling of the sun beating down on him, the itching of his skin. Aside from the sound of waves lapping the shore, it was silent. He took a deep breath, only for something to gurgle down his throat and in his chest. He panicked and rolled over, retching seawater tinged with something black into the sand of the beach. The fit lasted for what seemed like hours, water dripping from his mouth and nose, and even when it subsided he was left feeling like there was still more in his lungs.

He looked over his shoulder at the sea and got to his feet. He shifted uncomfortably, digging bare heels into the wet sand. He was on a boat, right? Jumped off. He realized he had been drifting all night. Unconscious. He should’ve drowned. Hell, as far as he could tell he woke up with lungfuls of water.

Something was digging into his skin. Didn’t quite hurt, but it was irritating. He hooked his thumb around it and tore; it was his shirt, torn and frayed. Did it shrink? It looked so much smaller in his…

His hand was different; the skin was mostly gray with some hints of reddish brown, with creases and lumps that hadn’t been there before, and he could see black veins underneath. He let the remains of his shirt drop when one of the veins briefly shook. Tentatively, he ran a hand against his face, and it felt different. Wrong.

He’d been out for a while, had inhaled quite a bit of water, and he was fine. And that wasn’t the only thing that had been wrong with him, right? 

He tried to piece things together but was having a hard time. Things were out of place, he was having a hard time keeping things straight. His shirt had been stretched and torn, looked so much smaller. He looked at his feet; one was bare, the other had a what was left of a boot, stretched to the breaking point and beyond. His pants were torn at the waistband and seams. Again, everything he wore was smaller, or he was bigger. His skin was wrong. 

He felt alright; except that he was hungry and his skin itched. And it took him way too long to realize that was a problem.

He’d been badly beaten, yeah, that much he remembered. But he didn’t feel it; should’ve been aching, barely able to stand. Only problem he had was the sun was irritating him, skin was itching. One night wasn’t enough to get better from his injuries. If it had been one night. Then yeah, he dove into the ocean. The impact of hitting the water had opened up plenty of half-scabbed over wounds. He could barely keep his head above water with his injuries and was struggling to keep conscious. Then he started coughing, and every nerve in his body went on fire.

Chris Redfield knew he should’ve been dead. From the injuries or drowning. But he wasn’t. He was bigger now. Skin was wrong.

Then, he was...

Something caught him in the corner of his eye; movement some ways down the beach down. The something fluttered. He took several tentative steps towards the movement, having difficulty placing it. The something may have been several somethings. It was hard to tell; white and grey feathers coating a writhing black mass. Tiny little sticks jutted out, flexing on joints at random. He lifted the mass up to investigate it, not registering that it was likely infected until he held it at eye level.

The little, scaly twigs weren’t twigs. They looked to be birds’ feet, webbed at the toes; kicking senselessly against the air. The mass flapped as wildly shaking loose feathers and slime. The something was a bird. Or probably several birds, maybe a flock of gulls stricken and tangled together. Even if it had been several birds, it clung together as one coherent mass. One coherent mass that was tightening around his hand. Feet kicked and beaks snapped.

With a cry, more of delayed surprise than pain, he shook his arm wildly, eventually dislodging the thing. It hit the sand in a clump and twitched and arched, digging a small furrow where it lay. Something about the way it moved reminded him of that vein in his… no. It reminded him of that thing he had burned yesterday… was it? How long was he out? It was yesterday. They burned that thing, and another like it, and another much bigger one yesterday. Him and… someone. 

It became important to him to dredge up that fact. He stood still, puzzling it out. It was him and Sheva, he managed to recall. Sheva Alomar. BSAA. It was important. They were off to stop Wesker from infecting the world. 

Wesker had won. Sharp, jagged teeth ground against one another.

Wesker had won. Something twisted and writhed underneath his skin as his fists clenched an and unclenched.

Wesker had fucking won. And he screamed and looked for something to vent on.

By the he regained his senses, the something that used to be gulls was in dozens of different strands, some still, some writhing, spread across the beach. He shook his hands to drop the last fragments of the thing to the dirt. Something squirmed weakly in his stomach for what felt like forever.

He needed to think, but couldn’t. the constant itching of his skin was distracting.

He turned his head skyward, squinting at the sun. He looked back to earth, spotting a bare tree off in the distance. He walked towards it, dragging his fingernails across his skin. It was hot out. His skin itched. He was hungry. He couldn’t think straight, but what he could think about was making him angry. Sitting in the shade would solve at least one of those problems. 

He got to the tree and sat down in the skeletal shadow it was casting on the ground. Between his size and the lack of leaves, it provided poor cover, but it was better than nothing. He kicked off the torn remainder of his boot and let his muscles go slack, forced himself to relax. He stared off in the distance. Wesker had won. Everything he fought for was dead now, because he fucked up. So much was lost. It was infuriating, he couldn’t think straight enough to remember what it was he lost, but he lost everything.

The sun continued to beat down, and as morning turned to noon, and the shade from the tree receded, he thought and thought about everything he had lost. He tried to making a list. 

Jill Valentine.

Claire Redfield.

Marlboro reds.

Raccoon City.

That stuck in his head. Raccoon City was lost before all this, wasn’t it? He couldn’t think too well, it was a tangled mess of names and places that blended together. He was certain of it. Just a jumble. Jill and Claire were the clearest things in his head, and even then, things bled together. Claire was a little girl. Claire was a grown woman. Jill was STARS. Jill was BSAA. He couldn’t remember what either of those words stood for, but Jill was both.

He growled in frustration as he confused himself and lost track of his thoughts. As the sun beat down the tangled mess of names, faces, places, and things failed to gel in his brain, he felt more and more angry. The BSAA was important, he couldn’t remember exactly what it was. Raccoon was important, he might’ve lived there. Wesker was a name connected to a upswelling of hatred. Jill and Claire… it hurt to think about them, but he couldn’t fucking stop. He rested his head against the back of the tree and gazed into the sun. 

Three things that were clear in his head. 

He loved Jill Valentine. She was dead now, because he failed.

Claire Redfield was his sister, the only family he had in the world. She was dead now, because he failed.

Albert Wesker killed everything, because he failed to stop him.

The tree he had been sitting under splintered easily when he attacked it, screaming in rage. Chunks of wood went flying in all directions and the trunk landed in the ocean. 

He panted, looking about frantically for something, anything else to hit. He stomped off in a random direction, scanning the horizon until he reached a road. The sun continued to burn, his mind continued to be an inaccessible mess of conflicting information, and the silence was leaving him along to burn and think. 

_Where am I going?_

That thought entered his head as he trudged along the unpaved, hard-packed dirt. In the distance, he could see the twinkling metal and glass of a truck. He couldn’t think of a reason why he was following the road, only that it made sense to do so. He followed the road because it was there, because it would have to lead… somewhere. He tried figuring out why he was following the road. “Because it’s there” was the only answer. His head was a mess. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. All he could think of was to find some more shade, and find something to eat. Shelter and food. That was something everyone needed.

The truck wouldn’t provide either, but it was there, so he investigated it. The windshield was smashed outward, a trail of cubic flecks of safety glass and black slime led off the road, before looping back to the car. Curious, Chris tugged at the front driver’s side door, tearing it off at the hinges. He had to take a knee and crane his neck to get a good look in the passenger’s compartment. There were papers soaked with gunk beyond readability, torn clothing and shredded seat cushions. Steering wheel had been yanked off, and the vents for the vehicle’s fan had been smashed; something had tried to force itself through them.

They could fit in narrow spaces.

That entered his head. He remembered, he and Sheva, they had fought one. Big. Bigger than he was back then, now… he wasn’t sure. Didn’t matter. The thing was big, but could squeeze itself through floor grating, flow through cracks and crevices. He and Sheva had a hard time, but they managed to kill it. Burn it.

Remembering something like that was…

He remembered that, that was good. He couldn’t remember much, so remembering anything was good. The problem was other things it kicked up. The other, vague half-memories attached weren’t. Something about fire was disconcerting to him. He couldn’t recall Sheva’s face. Couldn’t recall her voice. 

Could recall a ragged hole in her throat.

He wanted to hit something again.

Something thudded in the car’s engine blog.

He got to his feet and walked to the front of the car. Something was moving inside the engine. The things could fit in tight spaces. Hell, if it was anything like him, it didn’t much like the sun, either.

If it was anything like him.

He didn’t like that thought.

He pried the hood off, tossing it off to the side. The underside of it was coated in black gunk. The engine itself was a mess of dented metal, torn plastics, and more black slime. Something slithered in the mess. Chris drove his hands forward, smashing metal to get at the thing. His hands clenched against the squirming mass, hard. It tried hard, but couldn’t wriggle free.

It was a ridiculous tug-of-war. He tried to drag the thing out of the car, it pulled back. Couldn’t be sure if it was trying to free itself, or trying to drag him into it. Bare feet dug into the dirt road as he pulled. His right hand came free of the mess as he tore pieces of the thing loose. He let them fall to the dirt. 

His left was stuck. The thing was coiling around and not letting go. He swore and slammed his right hand back on the engine and growled. In the end, the first thing that gave was the car; whatever part of it the thing had anchored itself to gave way. Something in the car snapped, and the thing was dragged out. It managed to re-anchor itself, but he grasped it with both hands and pulled. The thing came free of the car, along with jagged bits of metal it wasn’t letting go of. It hit the dirt, kicking up dust. As it flailed, pieces of the engine that it held onto dug into his arms and chest.

He pulled it apart, strand by strand. It lashed out, digging it’s tendrils into his arms, and either by accident or design, slashing and stabbing him with the scrap metal it had wound around. He yelled and bit and tore. His teeth were sharp enough, or his jaws were strong enough, that the tendrils were easy to tear by biting them. Weaken a strand, take a chunk of it, then tear it free of the rest of the thing. It was long, messy work, but the outcome wasn’t much in doubt.

The thing took a very long time to stop moving. Even after it had begun to liquify, parts of it writhed and thrashed. When it was done, he was covered in slime. But the wounds it had inflicted were shut, they hadn’t bled a lot, even though he knew it had gotten some deep cuts during the fight. He was fine.

He should not have been fine.

That wasn’t fine.

He stared at the slowly melting Uroboros creature, almost wishing it wasn’t quite dead so he could kill it again. His skin burned. But he wasn’t hungry anymore.

He tried not to think about that.

He turned and walked down the road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all for now. I write at a snail's pace, so if you liked the fic, I'm sorry but it may be a while before you see any more. Please let me know what you think, good or bad; knowing what I got wrong is just as important as what I got right.


	4. Chapter 4

He sat on the floor of the shack, drumming fingers idly against his knee.  He was resting, watching the angle of sunlight streaming through the holes in the roof lengthen and change, roving slowly over the pool of thick black slime on the floor.  The sun bugged him now.  He noticed it when he stopped walking last night and curled up on the side of the road.  The itching, burning on his skin resolved almost instantly when the sun went down.

He waited until dawn broke, sleeping intermittently through the night, and he started walking again.  As the sun rose, he started to itch again, keeping his head low to avoid it getting in his eyes.  The road beneath his feet heated up, and he quickly went to walking on the dirt beside it.  And he itched and burned.  It annoyed him. 

Then he got hungry.

He just kept stomping forward unclear on where he was heading, until he found a town by the road.  He picked up his pace and rushed to it,

It seemed familiar. 

He explored the edges of town slowly, glancing side to side.  He kept vigilant as much to try and figure out why it seemed familiar as he did to spot anything that might threaten him.  And the sun beat down and he itched and burned and was annoyed.

He and Sheva were here, he thought.  He was pretty sure of it.  Maybe.  He could picture her taking point as things… people charged at them.  Except he couldn’t picture _her_.  He could picture a limp shape with a ragged hole in it’s throat, but her face, her voice?  She’d fought with him yesterday… two days ago… point was she’d saved his life and she was a blur.  

He’d wanted to hit something, really, really hard after thinking that, so went and searched the nearest buildings.

The things were hiding indoors while the sun beat down.  He learned this when he tugged the door of a building off its hinges and something briefly fled from the light before surging out at him.  It coiled around him and tried to dig into his skin and he tore it.  He stumbled as part of it coiled around his leg and hit the floor of the shack, and he bit and ripped and ate his fill and realized he wasn’t burning anymore.  As what was left of the thing rotted away and the wounds it caused him stitched themselves shut, he noted that he didn’t like being in the sun, it didn’t like being in the sun.  

He tried not to make too much of that fact.

After exploring a few more buildings, he sat and tried to puzzle out _why_ he was going wherever he was going.  He wasn’t wandering randomly, he was going _somewhere_ , but he couldn’t think of where it was.  No mission, no orders, nothing but himself.  He rested his head against the wall of the shack and yawned.  He needed to think.  He tried to start from what he knew.  Or was pretty sure he knew.  He and Sheva came here for a reason.  After that, things got blurry.  Bats. Centipedes.  Crocodiles.  A lot of people trying to kill him.  

Jill… and Wesker.  Things blurred harder.  Wesker being impaled… that happened before, that definitely happened before.  Jill and him, together.  In the mansion, on a boat.  In another mansion… was it another mansion.  Her diving at Wesker, sending both of them out the window.  He’d failed then, too.  Wesker won, and she dove out a window to save him.  So he could fail again.

He leaned forward and then slammed his head back against the wall hard enough to hear something crack.

Back on task.  He and Sheva were here before.  On their way to… couldn’t think about that.  Couldn’t think about where they were going _to_.  Where were they coming _from_?  Cramped charter flight with DeChant and his team.  Borrowing a jeep?  Humvee?  Truck?  Borrowing something and coming to this city, where he met Sheva.  Where they went to… not to.  From.  He ended up back here.  Going the same way wouldn’t help.  He’d go back.  He was heading back to the BSAA.

That plan was pointless.  There wasn’t a BSAA, there wasn’t a world any more, there wasn’t Sheva, there wasn’t Jill, there wasn’t anything because the fucking world was over and it was his fucking fault.   

He wasn’t sure when he got to his feet, but the sun started bothering him after he punched several holes in the outer wall.  Removing his forearm from it, he found shade and sat back down.

He’d head back to the BSAA. 

It wasn’t like there was anything better to do. 

He’d think about it, while he waited for the sun to go down.  Getting there would be easier when his skin didn’t burn and the light didn’t stab his eyes.  Who knows, maybe in the meantime he’d figure out something else to do.  Maybe he’d get hungry and try another building.

For now, he’d just wait.

* * *

Jill had initially doubled back to the helicopter, taking the other RPG-7 and whatever other supplies she had left; scraps from the first aid kit and a few flares.  It was meager, but she needed every scrap she could get in order to get by.  After that, she double checked the map, got herself oriented, and headed for the BSAA base. 

She kept her eyes on the road.  There wasn’t anything to really see on either side of it.  Dead trees, dirt, dead tree, something she did not want to investigate further, dead tree.  Some black, barely moving blobs that she blew past as fast as she could manage.  The road was more or less clear.  Once or twice, she spotted some abandoned vehicles which she slowed down to go past.  The interiors were stained black. 

She drove past a small town, really tiny.  She had to slow to a near halt to maneuver past wrecked vehicles, and she heard a crash.  A mass of chitin and black, twitching vines poured out of an upper floor window.  It was one of the uroboros things; a writhing mass of blackness, and it was in trouble.  Insects, taller than her with spiny, bladed limbs, swarmed over the thing, tangled in its tendrils.  It was bigger, but there were so many bugs; they hacked away at limbs, tearing it apart.  They carried off limbs and scuttled away, their combined efforts shrinking the thing.

She did her best to stop gawking and get around the wreck.  She had to ignore stuff like that; they weren’t close enough to notice her, so they weren’t a problem for her.  So she had to keep going.  Eyes on the road, focus on getting to the BSAA base.  There was nothing but static on the radio, so she turned it off and kept it off.  What would the stations have played if they weren’t off the air?  She couldn’t think about that. 

The sun was still up when she noted her eyelids begin to get heavy.  She hadn’t slept much last night… Christ she had been so drained before that, too.  Running on adrenaline was bound to pass out.  Every bump jolted her awake slightly, as it sent spasms of pain up her right side, but it was fleeting.  She yawned, blinked, then slammed on the brake and turned the wheel on the left to avoid going off road.

She had to get to the BSAA.  Had to.  Dying because she fell asleep at the wheel and wrecked was <i>not</i> in the plan. 

Jill pulled the jeep over to the side of the road.  

She stood, looking around, slowly.  She saw nothing but dead trees and dust.  Heard nothing but the wind.  It was flat.  There was nothing to see.    That meant it was safe to stop here for now.  She hoped.

She climbed into the back seat and lied down, trying to make herself comfortable on her left side.  She rested her head on her forearms and shut her eyes, listening to the wind blow.  her thoughts drifted.  She thought about Thanksgiving with the Burtons, the fall before she, Chris, and Barry went to the Arklay Woods to find Bravo team.  She’d been invited when she told Barry she had no plans for the holiday; he insisted she share it with his family.  Chris was there, too; Claire wasn’t going to be in town and he had nobody else.  It had become a tradition for them all after Raccoon.  She wondered what it was like for Chris and Barry these past few years.  It hadn't been pleasant for her.  She shook it off, tried to think back to happier times.  She fell asleep thinking about that kinda awkward drive home, Chris half-in-the bag, that first Thanksgiving.

When she awoke, it was night.  The stars were out, pinpricks of light in the darkness.  The stifling heat of the day was replaced by a chill she could feel through her uniform.  The dull, throbbing ache in her side and chest continued.  She was awake for a long time before she started moving again. When she sat up, she heard something.  An odd, sucking sound, off in the distance.

She had overslept. 

She blindly climbed over the center console into the driver’s seat.  The noise got louder.  Whatever was making it was closer.  She turned the key, and whatever noise it made was drowned out by the jeep’s engine coughing to life and shuddering.  The headlights illuminated the road ahead.

It was tall, a pillar of darkness tromping forward on two ridiculously human-looking legs.  It was tall and slender until it’s top, at least ten feet above ground, where it mushroomed out at the top.  The top of the thing was paler and Jill could make out several suspiciously human-looking attributes; arms, faces, legs, jumbled together in a random pattern.   The long, thick tendril, with writhing black offshoots, were familiar for other reasons.  It froze in the headlights, like a deer.

For a split second.

She put the car in reverse as it wound up and swung the tentacle forward in a sweeping motion.  Once, twice, three times.  She was offroad now, and she didn’t care.  Until she hit something solid, that teetered over. 

The impact reminded her of learning to drive, backing into a tree. 

But there weren’t any trees around here, even dead husks.

She shifted into drive and slammed the pedal down, intending to just ram the thing in front of her too, then drive away.  The jeep was sluggish, like she was dragging extra weight.   Feeling like she wasn’t going fast enough to run the thing over, she swerved at the last minute, only clipping it as it raised it’s arm to bring it down.  It was enough to knock the thing off balance and upset it’s attempt to swing at her. 

She drove, eyes switching between the dark road a over her shoulder, at the indistinct shadow in the back of the vehicle.  It was slowing her down, and she could hear the straining engine protest the added weight of the thing.

She continued swerving; trying to pry the thing loose.  It thudded and bounced behind her as they hit bumps, and she heard a curious howl as she dragged it onwards.  At last the vehicle jolted forward as something came loose; she wasn’t sure if it was part of her jeep or part of the thing, and didn’t care to stop to check.

She drove like a madwoman for the rest of the night.

* * *

Traveling by night hadn’t been a good idea.  His eyesight wasn’t good at night; looking back, it was easier to put up with the sun beating down on him, the itching distracting him, than stumbling forward in darkness.  Hell, most of the things that could threaten him were pitch black.  If the moon hadn’t been out, he might as well have been blind.  

He was working with a shoddy memory of the route he took to Kijuju bouncing around his jumbled head, distracting thoughts popping in and the rest of the world stealing his attention, and now he decided to do it without the benefit of being able to see.  This was a great plan.  Dead brush crushed under his heavy feet, sticks and rocks and twigs.   He hadn’t even noticed he’d left the road until he noticed the foliage. 

He kept going until his left foot sank into some mud.  He pulled it free and set it back down, taking another step forward.  His right foot splashed into water.  He took a step back.  Pale, white moonlight danced in a slowly-flowing river.  He let out a frustrated growl, pondering how deep it was, how wide it was.  Could he just wade across it?  Or jump it?  He was having trouble seeing the far bank in the darkness. 

He just studied the moon, reflected in the water.  It reminded him of a time years ago.  Him and Jill.  Overlooking a river, sliding his arms around her waist and pulling her close as they watched the moon.  His memory was fucking shot.  But that image, him and Jill, somewhere, was now crystal clear.  He struggled to try and think of more.  It was Europe, he thought.  Maybe after the BSAA was founded?  The two of them were taking leave, enjoying each other’s company without monsters trying to kill them.

It was a good memory. 

Which made it all the more infuriating when his thoughts drifted back to the here and now.  He tried to force himself to focus on the trip.  More details.  A distraction from now.  There’s be plenty of time to worry about now in the future.  He was so caught up in the attempt at reminiscing that it took him way too late to pick something white drifting on the surface.  A long, blunt triangle.  Bone and teeth.  Empty holes where eyes should’ve been. Bleached scales that sloughed off as it drifted against current, towards him.

When he spotted the skull, he let out a grumble as it drifted towards him, and took another step back.  The skull stopped drifting, held still in the water, before sinking down. He indecisively shifted on his feet, before taking a tentative step forward.

Kicking up a massive wave, the skull exploded from the water, jaws wide.  Just the skull, hurled forward on a column of black tendrils.  He raised his right arm in time for block the thing; spray of water hitting him the moment before the skull did.  It clamped down on his arm, conical teeth digging into his elbow and bicep.  It twisted and dragged, eliciting a scream from Chris as his arm bent at an angle that was unnatural, even when considering what he was now.  He landed facedown in the water as it continued to drag. 

He regained his footing, sinking a little into the muddy bank, as the skull shook and twisted and tore and tentacles probed and prodded, finding purchase in skin that the teeth had torn.  He roared in anger and pain as his free hand gripped the mass of tendrils.  He yanked some fibers out, even pulling out a bit of cylindrical bone, spine maybe.  But it wasn’t enough.  The think pulled and tore and ripped and he screamed.

Attacking the tendrils was worthless.  He couldn’t get free with its teeth hooked into his arm.  He heard a cracking noise as the skull clamped down tighter and roared in pain. 

Too many tentacles to tear, and his arm was being broken, and the skull was… bone.  Just like his arm.  

He did his best to force the skull sideways.  He swung his free hand into the skull, putting a massive dent in it as bone chips flew.  He let out another howl as the impact forced the teeth deeper in his arm.  A second punch finished breaking the skull, the upper jaw tumbling off into the river.  He gripped a handful of tentacles digging into his wounds and yanked.  A few more still tethered them together, but be he managed to tear his arm free, sending the crocodiles’ lower jaw flying as he did so.  He leapt back, making sure to back further away from the river. 

He strained to make out the tentacles in the darkness, backing away further, muttering inarticulate profanities.  He could make out several more crocodile skulls raising out of the water and wavering like snakes.  He _badly_ wanted to just leap forward and rend and tear, it took every ounce of restraint he had to realize that was a bad idea and to retreat.  He walked backwards, not taking his eyes off of the thing.

It wasn’t like he could’ve seen where he was going if he turned around, anyways.

His arm _hurt._   Badly.  He’d gotten cut up before, and the sun irritated him, but those were minor.  This was panful.  Something was moving in under the skin.  He healed fast, at least, cuts did.  His bones seemed in no hurry to fix themselves.  In fact, something was grinding against something.  His fingers twitched rapidly and out of his control.

It hurt.  It was getting worse.  It was moving from the bone breaks upwards and downwards, it burned and stabbed and crushed.  From the fingertips of his right arm up and across to his left shoulder, it hurt. 

Holding the arm up close to his face, he could see skin stretching and rippling.  He clamped his left hand over his right wrist and howled, loud enough his ears hurt.  He felt the moving under his fingers, and the pressure between his left hand and what was moving underneath his right arm was blindingly painful.  Then, suddenly, the pain vanished.

Then there was a sound like a water balloon being popped, and the skin of his right arm burst and something that blended too well with the darkness unraveled and shook and something wet and squirming landed on his foot.  He was splashed with something that wasn’t really blood, and it was his. 

He could feel the squirming mass against his foot, and his foot against the squirming mass.  He looked at his shoulder, and there was just something black and twitching, occasionally writhing against his grey skin.  The mass lifted off his foot, and hovered in front of his face.  He knew this because the mass was his arm, not because he could see it.  It was too dark to see.

Something in his stomach moved…. Thankfully not at all like his arm had felt like.  He felt sick.  Which, given what he now was, what he had been infected by, seemed… silly.  Now he was feeling sick?  Not earlier? 

He could feel tendrils drifting against the air and one another.  Every time they ran against one another or caught the breeze.  It surprised him, but he began to dawn on him it shouldn’t.  It was his arm, after all.  His arm had fucking unraveled.  What had it become.  Hell, what was he?  Would he get worse?  Hundreds of questions and ideas were running in his jumbled mind, distracting him from thinking about any one for any length of time.  He didn’t know if that was a blessing or a curse. 

He lowered himself to the ground and sat, the black mass coiling around him.

Right now, all he was going to do was think about that moonlit night with Jill and wait until morning.


	5. Chapter 5

The ride was long.

She’d driven until dawn and then a while after that.  She’d swerved offroad several times to dodge something in her path.  She just had to keep moving.  The things became more and more scarce when the sun came up.  She made a few tentative stops before coming to a halt when there was nothing around.

She got out of the driver’s seat and climbed into the back, trying to ignore the tarry black stains and the dents in the tailgate.  Her stomach growled.  She grabbed few cans and a canteen, looked to the sky to gauge the position of the sun, then dropped down out of the jeep entirely to sit in the shade of the vehicle. 

Using the knife, she cut the top off of a ration can.  It was some type of pre-cooked meat slime, by the looks of it.  She scowled, using the flat of the knife to lift a bit to her mouth.  Steeling herself, she tilted the knife into her open mouth.  It wasn’t as awful as she feared, but that was a low bar.  She swallowed and immediately reached for a canteen.

It was bad.  For the past three years, she was fed a steady diet of tasteless processed food; a scientifically-calibrated diet for a science experiment.  Something with flavor, especially a bad one, was going to take some getting used to.  After taking a drink, Jill grimaced and scooped up some more grey-red “meat” with her knife.  Between its unpalatability and her hunger, hunger won out. 

She finished the can rapidly; doing her best to slide the food down and ignore the flavor.  She opened up another can after drinking some more water.  The contents looked to be a fruit cocktail.  It was better, the mushy pears and cherries were better than the meat at least.  She finished by drinking the sugary syrup in the can and tossing it over her shoulder.

She was still hungry, but she looked over her supplies again.  She needed to make things last.  Right now, not being ravenous and having supplies was better than not being hungry and having no supplies.

She yawned.  Hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, either.  She didn’t want to spend another night outside.  She forced herself to her feet, leaned over the passenger side door, and fished out the map again.  She studied it for a while, trying to picture where she was, what landmarks she had passed on the way.  It was hard to reckon; the unfamiliar names and lines on the map.  Judging by where two lines merged, and how the road she was on merged into another earlier… she was getting close.

Or she was misreading the map.

She looked up at the sky.  It wasn’t noon yet.  If she hurried, she’d get to the BSAA base before nightfall.  Assuming she had read the map right. She could rest when she got there.  She tried not to think about what would happen if the agents on scene were like everything else in the world. 

She climbed back in the driver’s seat and got back on the road.

* * *

He’d fallen asleep thinking of Jill, and woke up tangled in a mass of darkness.  It was another Uroboros thing, small, even blind he managed to kill it.  But he stayed in place, listening.  He had waited until the sun was in the sky again before he retraced his footsteps.  Once he got back to the road, he continued down the way he’d been heading.

His arm bugged him.  Actually, everything bugged him, as the sun beat down, but his arm in particular.  The little black tendrils bunched up tightly, squirming at the sun beat down on him.  He tried to avoid looking at it, but he could feel it.  The hot sun beating down on his arm.  When a breeze kicked up and ran through a slimy mass that stretched down to his feet.  The dozens of individual strands writhing against one another.

A small roadside shack, maybe a store, or something, caught his attention.  The sun was high overhead, and he could use a break from walking.  He sighed and stooped to get through the doorway, and took a chunk out of the doorframe forcing himself through.  Overturned a few shelves as he cleared out a place to sit and rest.  Took a deep breath, raised his right arm to eye level, and forced himself to look.  It wasn’t...  it unsettled him, but it was part of him now.  It wasn’t an arm anymore really, just a mass of tentacles.  Thick, slimy black cords sliding against one another. 

Almost like… 

He tried, and failed to force the thought from his head.  His arm was looking a lot like the Uroboros things, come to think of it.  Very, very close. 

He let out a grumble.  

He narrowed his eyes at the limb, putting forth a conscious effort to stop it from moving.  The tendrils obeyed, bunching up around the main portion of the arm.  He observed as he focused on twisting and bending it in ways that it could not have done had it had any bones.  Trying to bend it around while moving the tendrils was tricky, he had trouble doing that.

His… hand, for lack of a better term, was four big tendrils at the end of the arm.  He made a fist, the four limbs curling together in a big   Forced them apart in a big “X” shape, then bent them further back.  He had a brief flicker of a memory; broken thumb once.  Couldn’t remember when.  The little pink digit was not aligned right, and it _hurt_.

Bending his tendrils back didn’t hurt at all.  All he felt was the… skin… skin-on-skin contact of the tendrils against one another.  They were all fine.  He could probably tie himself into nots and it wouldn’t be a problem.

He shuddered. 

He had no idea how long he spent, watching the limbs unfurl and bunch up, trying to figure out just how much control he had.  He wasn’t very reassured that he wasn’t having too much difficulty.  He at least could get everything to move on command.  B.O.W.s never seemed to have much difficulty with their transformations.

There were more memories.  Those things he fought with Sheva… still had trouble picturing her.  He could picture the thing taking up the deck of a tanker, though; large glowing bulbs on top of black, writhing stalks, like gigantic flowers.   Other things.  A woman who bled fire.  A big gray man whose heart was on the outside.  Something below the waves whose eye was blinding.  Tall, grotesque, almost-human, not human at all.  He brought his left hand up to his face again.  It was wrong.  Couldn’t picture what it’d look like in a mirror. 

He shook his head.  He was getting distracted.  A small shape, a little black mass, writhed in the corner.  He tilted his head at it.  He was hungry. 

He drew back his arm, feeling something that wasn’t quite muscle writhe and compress like a spring.  He tried not to think too much about it. 

He threw his arm forward and it <i>stretched</i>.  The sensation of it wasn’t painful, didn’t feel weird.  In the back of his head, that was another thing that he’d think about despite not wanting to later on.  At the moment, he didn’t care.  He was hungry.

His hand hit the black mass square in the middle, and tendrils tangled together on impact.  A second later, his arm snapped back like a bungie cord, again not painful, and dragged the thing close.  Visually, it was hard for him to see where his arm ended and his prey began, but he managed to not bite himself.  

When there was nothing left of the Uroboros thing, he grumbled and got back to his feet.  The break was alright, but he had to get walking again.  He crushed a shelf underfoot on his way out.  The shadows were getting long when he stuck his head out of the building; must’ve been in there for longer than he thought. 

He continued to itch and burn and his arm continued to flow and writhe as he continued down the road.

* * *

She did not like what she saw.  The place was small; the BSAA hadn’t allocated a lot to this region of the world; just a simple airstrip and a few small brick buildings serving as barracks.  The main building was two stories.  And it was all covered in black gunk.

She looked over her shoulder, into the back of the jeep.  She had an assault rifle with a few extra clips, an RPG, and a few gasoline cans.  The base couldn’t have been full; at least some of its contingent had been killed off in the marshlands, chasing after Irving.

After she had helped Irving escape to the marshlands.

She tried to strategize.  She had the gasoline, flares to ignite it, and she could…

 _Burn it all._  

That was the plan.  Set it all on fire to get rid of the BSAA base and everything inside it.  Burn all of the things, and just drive off.  Where to?  Who the fuck cared, there was nothing else to be done.  Just go around, until she was out of gas, ammo, water, food, or whatever.

She took a deep breath.  No.

There’d be food here.  Ammunition.  Water.  Beds.  Clear it out, and she could make a stand here.  This was going to be dicey.  But she had to take the base here and now.  She could do this. 

She got out of the jeep and walked towards the guard shack.  Something inside her twisted as she saw the little shack, walls bowed out, interior covered in tar.  She took a few more steps.  There was a two-story brick building, presumably the main base.  A few newer, less tarnished jeeps in front of the base.  The slimetrail from the guard shack led to that building.  On the far end was a small, squat cinderblock building, she could barely make out the sign; something in the local language above, “ARMORY” below in English.

She set the gasoline can next to the guard shack and ventured into the base.  She walked across to the armory slowly, head on a swivel.  The sun was creeping back towards the horizon, shadows lengthening, and she double checked each one for any hint of writhing, black mass.

When she reached the armory, she hesitated.  Took a deep breath, and opened the door. 

A man stood in the armor, shifting oddly on his feet.  Then it turned and the initial relief that she was not alone faded when she saw the hole, surrounded by powder burns, in the center of his gasmask.  And then he lunged and grabbed her and didn’t let go.  She felt something squirming between the two, saw a glint of something black writhing from the hole the mask.

She braced her left forearm under the thing’s chin and pushed away, while striking it in the face with her right.  Something ripped through the fabric of her shirt, and she felt something cold but burning against her skin.  She pounded harder, knocking it’s mask askew, and with a straining effort, managed to break the thing’s grip.

She stumbled out of the shack. With the helmet removed, the man was less a person a and more a husk; it’s desiccated face had a blackly oozing crater where the bullet had done its work.  She backed up and it followed.  It moved like a marionette; awkwardly lurching after her, like a marionette; each step accompanied by exaggerated, off-balance movement of its torso. 

She fired her rifle as she backpedaled; shooting its head until all that remained was a black, writhing stump. She sidestepped  An attempt to grab her then tried it's limbs.  The arms burst into thin, black tarry sticks, but when she hit it's left leg, it's thigh ballooned into a bulbous orange tumor, about the size of her head.  Not having time to reload, Jill let the rifle drop and drew her handgun, squeezing three bullets into the tumor.

It dropped like its strings had been cut, inert.

She stared at the body in the spreading black pool, trying to puzzle out what it was.  Hazy, half-connected thoughts in her head were interrupted by the sound of glass breaking and something  _wet_ slapping the ground.  The gunfire alerted the things in the base.

She ran back to the guard shack.  She unscrewed the cap of the gas can and poured it out on the asphalt and the guard shack.  The wriggling darkness was closing the distance; she had no clue how many there were; whether it was one things, or two, or however many; just that there were a lot of tentacles angrily flailing as they approached her.

When the can was half drained, she ran back to the jeep, leaving a trail of the liquid on the ground.  She climbed into the back of the jeep and raised the rifle.  The exterior fence wasn’t much of a bottleneck; the Uroboros things squeezed their way thought the chain link as easily as they rolled over the guard shack.  She struck a flare and threw it, and the fumes ignited. 

The things, there were definitely multiple, tore the fence apart as they attempted to flail away from the fire.  She opened fire with her rifle, taking aim at anything orange she saw.  When the flaming writhing mass continued to roll towards her, she picked up the RPG.  Part of her thought she had to conserve whatever she could. 

The part of her that just wanted to get the creatures out of the way won out.  The explosion tossed black coils and chunks of asphalt in ever direction. 

She managed to get around the still-burning fire by stepping over a section of the fence that was collapsed by the monsters.  She made her way back to the armory.  It was small, but well-equipped.  Some Sig Sauer rifles, plenty of ammunition, several boxes of grenades.  She checked them off in her mind, not really registering the bounty she found.  She just focused on the nine-millimeter handgun lying on the floor, and the single brass shell casing she had inadvertently kicked against the wall when she entered.

It looked like the… thing… the BSAA Agent had shot himself.  Then gotten back up.  Maybe somehow he hadn’t turned until he broke his gasmask with the bullet?  Then Uroboros brought him back as thing that had attacked her?  She focused on the shell casing. The man had shot himself.  Maybe he saw the red cloud rolling in and decided he didn’t like the looks of it.  Maybe he was the only one geared up, and when the others turned he realized there was no way out. 

He saw the end of the world, and killed himself.  And she couldn’t blame him. 

The sound of something squelching against the ground interrupted her.

She looked out the door of the armory and saw a smallish conglomeration of tentacles, flopping over repeatedly.  It was maybe as long as she was tall, smallish for the things.  It was singed badly; several tendrils seemed burned together.  It was still smoking as it approached her.  She looked at the box of grenades again and lifted one out.  It was cylindrical.  Could be smoke, stun, or incendiary.

It was a minor, but satisfying victory when she pulled the pin and a few seconds later the things was enveloped in burning thermite.

There were two more straggling, badly singed Uroboros things that survived the fire and the RPG.  She burned them too.  After that, she checked over every building twice over.  It was a mix of thoroughness and sleep-deprived catatonia; she couldn’t be sure if nothing changed from one check to another, because she was exhausted and tired and crashing from the adrenaline high after killing the Uroboros.  She didn’t have the strength to loot or the wherewithal to take an inventory of supplies; she just looked and saw nothing of interest.

Eventually, she just sat on the staircase leading up to the second floor of the main building, exhausted.  How long had she been at this?  It was getting dark.  They liked the dark.  Maybe one was sleeping in a dark corner, and hadn’t been caught in the flames and explosions. 

She’d find out in the morning.  If she made it to morning, then she had gotten everything.

Everyone. 

These things used to be BSAA.

She had been stupid to expect to find anything else here.  The world was over.  It was fucking over.  She was the last woman alive.  She’d come this far, and she just had an empty building to show for it, because she killed what was left of the people she hoped were still alive.  Tomorrow the sun would rise, and she’d still be in an Uroboros-consumed hellhole.

She took a deep breath.  No.

There was a way out.  Her hand drifted to her side.  The one agent killed himself in the armory killed himself.  Maybe, probably, possibly because he saw uroboros and didn’t want a part in the world that came about.  And she couldn’t blame him for that.

She could scrape and fight and run and hide and it wouldn’t change any facts.  She was still stuck here, alone, with maybe enough supplies.  She was tired, dragged out, and alone.  The world was over, and the last possible hope she had was now just scorch marks and slime out by the guard shack.

And it was her fault.  Her blood was used to make Uroboros, she had been Wesker’s puppet, science experiment, and unwilling partner in crime for years. 

And she’d have to live with it every day for the rest of her life.  Which was going to be hard, brutal, and probably, very short.  The entire world wanted her dead, if what was left had enough brainpower to want anything.  Maybe nothing would find her.  Then it was all a matter of her food running out as time went on.

Unless… she found her hand on her gun.  It could end right here and now.  Quickly.

She removed her hand from the gun.  No.  She’d been a police officer, a counter bioterror operative, an experiment.  But above all else, she was a survivor.  She’d dig her heels into the ground, fight, and bleed.  If she died… she’d just be an ungrieved corpse in a dead world.  But it was up to the world to kill her, not herself.  Maybe she’d starve, or die of dehydration, or be eaten. 

But for now, she’d just survive.


	6. Chapter 6

She’d been at it for a few days. 

She obsessively double-checked the base when she woke up after her first night on base.  It was clear, for now.  Then, she began to try to make the base home.  It was a ridiculous thought, there was no “home” for her here, or anywhere else for that matter.  But she tried to make it home nonetheless,

The commander’s office was on the upper floor, and in decent condition.  She immediately removed all of the commander’s photographs, newspaper clippings, and personal effects to an office next door.  She dragged a cot and mattress up there, dragged a couch out of position, and set her up there.  She transferred the weapons from the armory to the room, too.  It was exhausting, and her muscles burned with the effort.

She took a nap and woke up hungry, then went to the mess hall to see what they had on offer.  The BSAA, as underfinanced as it was, had a higher budget than the local military, it seemed.  At least, the taste of their canned “meat” was more closely approaching real meat.  The electricity was off, and, she mentally decided to clean the fridge.  Later.  She spent the rest of the day rifling through the footlockers of one barracks, finding some more clothes that might fit her, along with more persona affects she did not want to think too much about.

There was a lot of work in order to make the base a bit more tolerable.  Jill did it all with minimal breaks caused by the pain in her side, hunger, or fatigue.  Because working was helpful.  If she had a project to do, she could focus on barricading the door, or cleaning the thick, black gunk out, or disposing of the thick, ugly chemicals she had seen.  Because if she wasn’t focused on something else, her thoughts would inevitably drift back to things he didn’t want to think about.

But she ran out of tasks to assign herself by day four.  The commander’s office was as nice as she could make it at the moment.  She’d checked the vehicles parked outside, and their engines all sounded healthier than the jeep she rode in on.  Except for the one with the black sludge marks on the inside.  She didn’t check that one.  The rotten food was disposed of out back.  Guns were checked, re-checked, and test-fired.  She found the radio shed, but couldn’t get it to work at all.  And the instructions were in the local language.

She’d spent the fifth day moving the food.  The rotten stuff was outside, and the cans and whatever looked non-perishable was moved to the commander’s office upstairs.  Then she moved it all back downstairs.  Than upstairs.  She kept at it for a long time, tiring herself out, because it was busywork that kept her from thinking.

Except it really wasn’t. 

There was nothing to do.

There was nothing for her to do.

There was nothing she could do.

Except wait.  Sleep, wait, eat, wait, sleep.

That wasn’t helping.  Sitting by herself just let her think about the end of the world, and her role in it.  If she hadn’t survived the fall, Wesker wouldn’t have a test subject to create Uroboros.  If she hadn’t been fighting Chris and Sheva, they might’ve stopped him sooner.  Maybe he could’ve made it work anyways.  If she never joined the BSAA and gotten exposed to the T-Abyss vaccine in addition to the Nemesis vaccine, maybe when the black cloud rolled around the world, she would’ve been like everyone else, and not have been stuck alone out here.  If she and Chris went on leave together right after the Zenobia, rather than chase after Spencer, maybe they’d still be together today.

There were a lot of “ifs”.

She waited, and every so often the thought of just checking out came to mind.  Few pounds of pressure on a trigger, and it’d be over.  She wouldn’t be stuck here, waiting for the canned food to run out.  It was occurring to her more and more frequently.

She did her best to ignore it.

\---

It had taken him seven days, unless he had lost count, to get there.   And like him, it didn’t look like it had fared too well over the past few days.  He was back where he started the mission.  He wasn’t quite sure what he was hoping to find.  His head ached and the sun was starting to get low.

It had seemed so important to get back to this place since the world went to Hell; it kept him from thinking too much.  It was helping stave off distraction.  The long walk, and the goal, kept him from thinking.  He’d fought daily, and sometimes nightly, even had gotten hurt on his way, but thankfully nothing like that night at the river.  Didn’t have any scars or anything.

Why did he come back here?

Orders?  When things went to shit, you were supposed to regroup for new orders.  Not that he’d be getting any here.  No power, no commanding officer, no people.  Hell, hadn’t he elected to forge on ahead rather than wait for orders?  Couldn’t remember, but it seemed like it was a ‘him’ thing to do.

Weapons?  He… as long as he avoided the water, he didn’t think he needed one.  Plus… he looked down at his right arm.  He had no clue how he’d manage pulling a trigger.  There was always his left hand, but something about holding a gun southpaw just threw off his aim.  Just thinking about it angered him… the feel of a well-tuned gun at the range hit him briefly.

Food?  He was getting hungry again, it had been about half a day since he’d last seen an uroboros thing.  The base had to have stockpiles of canned foods or MREs or something.  It didn’t really matter that he could’ve found food elsewhere, or that those bug things were surprisingly palatable.  In the moment, he’d eat them, but… he wanted real food.  Human food.  Yeah, he’d find something to eat.    

He walked lazily around the perimeter; unsure if the unfamiliarity of the surroundings were just because it was dark out, his memory was hazy, or it had changed somehow.  He was as sure he was in the right place as he could be when he noted the BSAA logo on the sign outside the entrance.  The front gate was a warzone.  He was reasonably sure the guard house hadn’t been burned when he left here.

Crusted over black muck on the asphalt told him something other than the guard house was on fire.  Probably the guy turned, and some sort of heat source inside the shack caught fire.  Made sense.

He shuddered thinking about fire.

He stepped over the crumpled section of the gate and headed for the main building.  He’d find something to eat here, be it food or another Uroboros thing.  It had ceased to irk him when he did that anymore.  

He had to tug the door off its hinges; someone had chained them shut.  He didn’t even allow hope that someone survived to flicker to the surface; chances were they locked down immediately and turned when Uroboros reached them.  He stooped down and entered the place, trying and failing to recall where the mess hall was.  Damn it.  He’d been at the base once, hadn’t given him the grand tour, but he had to remember where the mess hall was, right?  He’d have to look for it.

He let out an amused snort.

This felt _familiar_ to him.  It struck him, wasn’t that how things always went?  Abandoned monster infected place.  Cut off from anyone.  No idea where he had to go.  Just had to explore base and find what he needed.  This had happened to him before.

More things changed, the more they stayed the same.

Him being the monster was new, though.

\---

 _Something was in here_.

She kicked off the blanket and stood up from the cot.  Something big was moving about downstairs; which was why she slept in the commander’s office on the second floor.  She got into her boots and groped around until she found her equipment harness.  She looked at the selection of weapons she had dragged into the office and picked up an assault rifle. 

Hopefully there was only of them.

They didn’t seem to travel too far to her knowledge.  Yeah, once they spotted something they wanted to eat, they’d chase it down, but when there wasn’t something that caught their interest the stayed in the same place.  The things she’d encountered on the road hadn’t followed her all the way out here.  It meant that once she’d lured all the ones in the base outside and lit them up, she had a few nights where she could try to sleep with a roof over her head and walls between her and the world.

Until now.  Something had found her.

Part of her was… happy about this?  One of them had found her.  It broke up the monotony, meant that she had something to do other than wait for her food to run out.  She had something she could kill.

Something slammed downstairs. 

She crept down the stairs, making as little noise as she could, while something continued to crash around, making an unholy racket.  It was odd; whatever was downstairs was a lot noisier than they usually were; like it was tearing the base apart looking for something rather than just sliding around bonelessly.  It also seemed to have bypassed the stairs, if her hearing was right. 

When she got to the ground floor, she looked to the entrance.  The thing had ripped the doors open; she grimaced.  Once she dealt with the thing, she’d have to check the hinges; hopefully she could figure out some way to salvage it.  Maybe a project to barricade up the hole would stop her thoughts from drifting. More busy work would keep her from thinking about… things she had been happening a lot lately.

Plan was to lure it outside and burn it.  Same as all the others that had been here when she got back.  That nagging thought that the ‘others’ used to be BSAA members forced itself in her head before she quashed it.  They were B.O.W.s when she burned them, if anything it was a mercy.

She was getting distracted again.  Forcing herself to think back to the thing in the base, she crept back to the entrance.  Sounded like the thing was tearing up the Mess Hall; funny since they didn’t seem to go for canned food.  Then again, she never paid much attention to their eating habits, that didn’t help them burn.  It sounded like a wrecking ball going through the place.

Rifle up, she turned the corner, stepping over another set of doors that had been ripped free of its hinges.  Tables were overturned, and the partition between the dining area and kitchen was smashed.  She levelled her rifle at the thing in the causing all the chaos.  It was making a mess of things, looking through the fridge and pantry and making increasingly agitated sighs.

Wesker was always ranting about how Uroboros would choose superior humans; that every test subject had been a failure apparently didn’t shake his faith in the virus’s ability to… do whatever he wanted out of it.  She was so used to writhing masses that they had to incinerate to dispose of, she barely had thought of what someone “chosen” would look like.

It shouldn’t have surprised her it’d be something like Tyrant.

Rare genetic quirks were what separated Tyrants from zombies when a person was infected by the T-Virus.  Similar factors were at play with the T-Abyss Virus, and some of the other rare progenitor-derived viruses.  So, it made sense that when Uroboros “selected” someone, the result would be a Tyrant.

Its back was to her as it rummaged through the mess hall.  Its skin was mostly gray with flecks of red, dark veins visible beneath, and it wore stained and shredded remnants of a pair of khaki pants.  It was extremely muscular and broad-shouldered and even hunched over as it was, it towered over her.  Its left arm looked normal, but it was trailing the right along the ground; a big, boneless mass with dozens of writhing tentacles covering it, like any other Uroboros monster she had seen.  Suddenly, the tendrils went very still, pressing against the linoleum floor. 

\--

It had been the third door he’d tried.  First was an office, second was a janitor’s closet.  The ceiling was low, and he had to awkwardly crouch in order to get through doorways.  When he got to the mess hall, he tried to picture eating there before; after stepping off the plane but before driving off to meet Sheva.  Couldn’t remember it. 

Maybe it hadn’t happened.

The mess hall was dark, windowless, but he could make out the partition to the kitchen in the back.  Beyond that a large refrigerator with stainless steel doors covered in grime.    The fridge was off, and that meant the food had rotted.  But he was hungry.  Hadn’t run into any Uroboros things yet.  Had they all burned?  How had that happened? 

He pushed those thoughts aside.  Rotten or not, he was hungry.  And maybe there were cans.

He tossed some tables and chairs out of the way as he crouch-walked across the room.  The doorway from the dining area to the kitchen was way too small, and the partition looked thin.  Vague memories of other places like this hit him.  Mess halls, diners, cafeterias.  New York, Raccoon City, here.  Chris put his and on the partition and drew back is right arm.  He smashed right through it.

He almost had to get on all fours to get through to the kitchen.  Then he immediately opened the fridge by tearing one of the doors out, and his jaw dropped.  It was completely empty.  No rotten vegetables or meat, no uroboros thing waiting to pop out, nothing.  He ran his hand over the shelves, feeling nothing.  It was empty; his hand came back clean.  No gunk or anything.  He growled in frustration.

He checked the cupboards.  There had to be something.  Anything.  Pots and pans were smashed as he became increasingly angry.  He’d come back here, under a burning sky, for reasons he couldn’t even begin to explain, and maybe for food, and there was nothing here.  Why did he come again?  He grwled and head-butted a cupboard door, splintering the wood.

He was so frustrated that it took him way too long to notice it.  His arm was resting on the ground… his not-arm was.  Along the floor he could <i>feel</i> something.  A rhythmic tapping, very faint, but he could still feel it.  When he noticed it, he stopped trying to find food and focused on the sensation.  Two beats, repeated.

Behind him.

\--

The creature tensed up, then it wheeled around.

The Tyrant’s eyes widened the longer it looked at her.  Its face was skeletal; gray flesh tightly clinging to it.  It exhaled through a crater where the nose should’ve been.  A mouthful of sharp teeth opened.  Aside from the writing of its tentacles, it was stock still, staring at her intently.

Still at the Mess Hall entrance, she took aim for its face.  Wouldn’t do much.  She spared a sideways glance; it didn’t look like he’d have an easy time getting through the doorways.  That was good; keeping him slowed down was necessary.  It struck her that this thing probably wouldn’t be as obliging in blindly following her into a trap.  She had some high explosives and incendiaries upstairs though…  Just had to get their before it could get her.

She started to back down the hallway.

The tyrant stood to its full height.

And promptly belted out a “Damn it!” when it’s head hit the ceiling, hard enough to crack it.  A second passed, the Tyrant hunched back down, rubbing the top of its head, before letting out an exasperated growl.

She’d been deprived of sleep, spent every waking moment hypervigilant.  She’d had nothing but her thoughts to occupy her for the past week; thinking of how her blood led to the end of the world, or trying to think of happier times that would inevitably turn sour when she focused on the present.  The BSAA facility had been the one thing she let herself get her hopes up for, and it had all fallen apart.  She was staring down a Tyrant, something that could kill her in seconds if she wasn’t careful.  And her frayed nerves had decided that this was their limit; death incarnate clonking its head on the ceiling like out of a slapstick routine.   The “Damn it!” just completed things.

She laughed.  It cocked its head at her and its jaw dropped a little. The surprised look in what was left of its face in response to her laughter, just made her laugh harder.  It had no right to be surprised she was laughing.  She wasn’t on guard anymore; she was just doubled over.  She was crazy, the world was crazy.  The Tyrant must’ve been crazy, because instead of attacking her, it looked at her, looked at the fresh cracks it had left in the ceiling, and began laughing, too. 

She stopped laughing long after the Tyrant did.  Out of breath she looked up at the thing, which was now sitting on the floor, staring at her intently and with its teeth clenched.  It coiled its tentacle arm in front of it, as if to demonstrate it wasn’t going to attack.  It blinked repeatedly, as if it couldn’t believe what it was seeing.  Apparently, the universe had decided that it owed her at least _something_ , and this Tyrant wasn’t hostile.  Hell, given its outburst, it knew English.  She let the rifle hang. 

She was desperate to talk to another person; and even this thing wasn’t one, this represented her first chance to actually have a conversation with anything that wasn’t herself in what felt like forever.  It wasn’t interested in hurting her, which made it a step above every other thing she had seen since she had gotten here.  She inhaled and tried to ignore how absurd the situation was when she said “Hello.”

The smile disappeared from her face and her blood ran cold when the Tyrant raised a hand to her and said “Jill…”

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Silex, as always, for being around to bounce ideas off of.


End file.
